I NEVER TOUCHED A PIGEON, 2023
Videoinstallation, Super-8-ProjeCtion, Artist BOOk
‚I never touched a pigeon‚ is a collective multimedial work dealing with the question of absence and blind spots in expanded photography.
The title ‘I never touched a pigeon’ refers to Johann von de Keuken’s film ‘blind kind’ (1964) and results from the discovery that seeing people are blind to recognize the world in exclusively tactile terms. A blind child learns to call a pigeon by its name through touching the animal as such, a seeing child by sight. In recognition of this lack of knowledge the artist started to explore the borders of perception and the opportunity of relearning to see.
The projected videos refer to this process: Through zoomed-in videos the sight becomes limited, the object’s movement faster and unpredictable. It creates a dance of guessing and following that demands the viewers entire concentration. The projected videos are framed by two ladders. The ladders are leading nowhere, they are proofs of absent functionality and embody the metaphorical gaps between senses and blind spots in perception.
The artist book offers a fragmented but thickly layered insight into the abstract and complex topic of absence. It can be considered as an interim collection of uncontextualized pieces as placeholders for decisive steps in the process of examining absence. It aims not to answer but raise questions and opens spaces for thoughts and associations about the unseen in photography.
As a third component super 8 films of unknown people are projected. They picture the absent owners and question the fundamental concept of ownership. They are traces of absence and part of the series ‘index of things that are not mine’.
The works are the result of a two weeklong residency in the fortress Hohensalzburg in Salzburg led by Ángela Bonadies and Brígida Maestres and were part of the show ‘Capturing the Unsceen‘.
access video: https://vimeo.com/918095541 https://vimeo.com/918095541
